Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Colonial Properties Trust Second Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions)

As a reminder this conference is being recorded Thursday, July 28, 2011. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jerry Brewer, Executive Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Jerry Brewer – Executive Vice President, Finance

Thank you, Donald. Welcome to everyone joining us today. We released our earnings this morning via Business Wire. A copy of this earnings release maybe found on our website at colonialprop.com. We are also webcasting this call for your convenience. A replay will be available at our website after the call.

Tom Lowder, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Reynolds Thompson, our President and Chief Financial Officer will lead today’s call. On the call, they will discuss our business developments, financial results for the second quarter and our guidance for 2011. After their comments, we will open up to take your questions. Paul Earle, our Chief Operating Officer, is also here to field the questions.

Let me remind you that much of the information we discuss on this call, including answers we give in response to your questions may include forward-looking statements regarding our beliefs and current expectations with respect to various matters. These forward-looking statements are intended to fall under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Securities Law. These estimates are also based on a number of assumptions, any of which, unrealized, could adversely affect our accuracy. Please see our latest SEC filings for the detail and explanation of risk. Any non-GAAP financial measures we discuss are reconciled to the closest GAAP measures and filings that can be found on our website. None of the statements we make during this call shall not constitute in offer to sale or solicit to buy any of the company’s common shares.

I will now turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Lowder – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jerry and welcome to everyone joining us. Today we will discuss our second quarter results and review our outlook for 2011. Our three CEO focus directives for the year are to grow the company, improve operations and achieve our balance sheet target. We have said that our internal growth is coming from growing our core multifamily revenue during increasing our rental rents. We did exactly that in this quarter with solid revenue growth of 3.9% maintained in a high level of occupancy and efficiently managing our properties resulting in a strong NOI growth of 7.5%.

Our external growth is coming from the development of multifamily apartment communities on the land that we have an inventory, improve acquisitions and multifamily assets in our core Sunbelt markets. We started multifamily developments in Tampa and Austin. Next month or early September, we will break around on a 232 unit multifamily development on land that we own and are mixed use development in North Orlando.

Relating to our third CEO directive we are changing our balance sheet targets. With our release today, we announced the closing of seven-year $250 million unsecured term loan, which was used to pay down the substantial portion of the outstanding balance on our line of credit. Also in July, we completed our $75 million ATM program that we announced in May. So, we have completed our equity issuances and finalized our debt restructuring for this year.

Reynolds will provide additional comments on these accomplishments in just a moment. Our goal continues to be to regain our investment grade rating and we believe our progress on the balance sheet over the past 2.5 years has put us in a position to achieve our rating in the near future. With continued improvement in fundamentals with our multifamily properties, we feel very bullish about our growth at this point in the business cycle.

Now Reynolds will provide more details on our operating performance and activity during the quarter and I will conclude the call with our updated guidance. Reynolds?

Reynolds Thompson – President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Tom. FFO for the second quarter was $0.32 per share, compared with $0.27 a year ago. The increase is primarily related to an improvement in same property net operating income and contribution from recent acquisitions. Multifamily fundamentals remained strong in all of our major markets as evidenced by same property NOI increase of 7.5%, compared to the second quarter of 2010. Our top performing markets were Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Phoenix and Raleigh.

Second quarter revenue grew 3.9% versus prior year and 2.8% sequentially. Our strongest revenue markets are Austin, Charlotte, Phoenix, Raleigh and Savannah. Revenue was driven higher about 3.3% increase in rent per occupied unit. The variety of methods used by our peers to measure the change in new lease and renewal lease rates.

Please note that once you make your selection, it will apply to all future visits to NASDAQ.com.
If, at any time, you are interested in reverting to our default settings, please select Default Setting above.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues in changing your default settings, please email isfeedback@nasdaq.com.

Please confirm your selection:

You have selected to change your default setting for the Quote Search. This will now be your default target page;
unless you change your configuration again, or you delete your
cookies. Are you sure you want to change your settings?